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Two: Description of the Metres

2.19 Hypermetres, Veóha & Gubbinã

Only two examples of gaõacchandas hypermetre have been found in the Canon so far, they are Veóha and Gubbinã. The structure of both is similar and can be defined as follows:

The middle gaõas can be repeated a flexible number of times. The end normally finishes with a full gaõa as described above but may finish with a half gaõa Å. Note that in these metres the pattern ÛÜÛ is supposed to occur only in the odd gaõas (in contradistinction to the Ariyà class of metres).

The Veóha metre is normally composed of descriptive compounds (vaõõakas) of varying length. The only examples discovered so far are in the Kuõàla-jàtaka Ja 536. Sometimes there are only four gaõas in the compound, then the structure looks like this:

but the text of these compounds now is very corrupt, and they sometimes have only three gaõas (lacking the first).

As the example here is a 6 gaõa compound:

Gubbinã has the same structure, but need not consist solely of compounds. The only known example is the frequently repeated praise of the Three Treasures beginning "Iti pi so..."